Security Breaches Shake Confidence in Credit-Card Safety
By Christopher Elliott; The Daily Beast
In March 2012 an estimated 1.5 million credit card accounts were stolen from Global Payments. While Global Payments states that no consumer names, addresses, or social security numbers were taken, experts are saying that this breach may lead to a federal breach disclosure law. Even though the breach occurred in early March, it took three weeks for the public to be informed of the breach. Even better, it was not Global Payments that exposed the breach, it was an online blogger named Brian Krebs that informed the public that the credit card accounts had been compromised. Krebs is also concerned that the estimated number of accounts is too low.
The article states that the details of the security breach are still unknown, but there are many things that Global Payments could have done to prevent the breach, or to at least detect the breach before the estimated 1.5 million accounts became compromised. First of all the company should have multiple strong, fully updated, firewalls. The company should also continuously check the firewall logs to see if there have been any attempted breaches. Finally, the company should perform vulnerability testing to find any weaknesses in their network.
Security Breaches Shake Confidence in Credit-Card Safety
By Christopher Elliott; The Daily BeastIn March 2012 an estimated 1.5 million credit card accounts were stolen from Global Payments. While Global Payments states that no consumer names, addresses, or social security numbers were taken, experts are saying that this breach may lead to a federal breach disclosure law. Even though the breach occurred in early March, it took three weeks for the public to be informed of the breach. Even better, it was not Global Payments that exposed the breach, it was an online blogger named Brian Krebs that informed the public that the credit card accounts had been compromised. Krebs is also concerned that the estimated number of accounts is too low.
The article states that the details of the security breach are still unknown, but there are many things that Global Payments could have done to prevent the breach, or to at least detect the breach before the estimated 1.5 million accounts became compromised. First of all the company should have multiple strong, fully updated, firewalls. The company should also continuously check the firewall logs to see if there have been any attempted breaches. Finally, the company should perform vulnerability testing to find any weaknesses in their network.